Infographic: Students have their say on online rights and responsibilities

Check out the results of the 2013 ‘Have your Say’ survey, the UK’s largest ever survey of young people’s attitudes toward online rights and responsibilities. Over 24,000 young people age 7-19 from across the UK responded to the survey, and a further 90 young people explored these findings in focus groups.

Two infographics below with primary and secondary results – these are large files, so why not make a poster! And ask your students what their top ten are to compare.

Sylvia

 

Researcher dispels myths about cyberbullying

Myth or Fact?

  • There is more online bullying than in-person bullying
  • Cyberbullying is more distressing because it follows you home and is on all your digital devices
  • Cyberbullying is getting worse
  • Teen suicide is a growing epidemic due to cyberbullying and the dangers of the Internet

According to Michele Ybarra, president of the Center for Innovative Public Health and a leading researcher on youth risk, these are ALL MYTHS.

Read the real facts in this article and radio interview by Larry Magid of Safekids.com.

Sylvia

Webinars – Addressing youth risk in a positive and restorative manner

from Nancy Willard of Embracing Digital Youth: Addressing youth risk in a positive and restorative manner

Embracing Digital Youth is proud to announce our first two Webinars. Through these Webinars, Embracing Digital Youth will seek to help educators, mental health professionals, law enforcement, and policy-makers engage in prevention and intervention activities that are grounded in research insight, focus on influencing positive behavior and implementing restorative practices, and encourage effective evaluation.

A 2-page Issue Brief for each Webinar will provide insight and recommendations for practice. The Webinars will be available for later viewing in our archive. Documentation will be provided to support professional development continuing education requirements.

Register online at: http://embracingdigitalyouth.org/webinars (Cost $39)

*Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act: What Schools Must and Should Do* – April 5 at 7:00 P.M. Eastern Time.

The Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act added a provision to the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) requiring that schools receiving E-Rate funding provide students with instruction in Internet safety, including cyberbullying and social networking safety. School agencies receiving E-rate funding must update their policy so they can certify they are providing Internet safety instruction, beginning with funding year 2012 (July).

This Webinar will provide recommendations on how districts can engage in effective multidisciplinary planning to ensure that the manner in which they will provide Internet safety instruction is grounded in accurate research insight, uses effective approaches to promote positive norms and transmit effective skills, and incorporates evaluation to ensure effectiveness.

Presenters:

  • Mike Donlin, Program Supervisor in The School Safety Center of the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction for Washington State.
  • Lisa Jones, Research Associate Professor of Psychology at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
  • Connie Williams, NBCT, Teacher Librarian, National Board Certified. Petaluma High School, California. Past President of the California School Library Association,
  • Eric Willard, Chief Technology Officer – Community Unit School District 300, Illinois.

*Positive Peer-based Approaches to Address Cyberbullying* – April 26th at 7:00 P.M. Eastern Time.

Schools are struggling to address a new challenge–the hurtful behavior of students when using digital technologies. Addressing this new challenge is difficult because much of this hurtful behavior occurs in digital environments where adults are generally not present. Hurtful interactions frequently occur when students are off-campus, with the damaging impact at school.

How can educators ensure the development of a positive school climate and support positive actions by peers that will be necessary for prevention and early intervention? These three professionals are working on innovative new approaches to enhance these positive peer-based approaches.

Presenters:

  • Patricia Agatston, Ph.D. Licensed Professional Counselor with the Prevention/Intervention Center, a student assistance program in the Cobb County School District, Georgia.
  • Nancy Willard, M.S., J.D. Director of the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use/Embracing Digital Youth.
  • Karen Siris, Ed.D. Professor at Adelphi University, Garden City, NY, Principal at Oceanside Elementary, NY.

>> Registration and more information

 

A decade of decline in online youth victimization

It’s not the headline that’s going to make the national press. Ho hum, young people aren’t perverts or helpless victims. But here’s another slice of non-sensationalistic reality about what parents and teachers SHOULDN’T flip out about…

From the press release – “A new study from the University of New Hampshire Crimes against Children Research Center finds declines in two kinds of youth Internet sexual encounters of great concern to parents: unwanted sexual solicitations and unwanted exposure to pornography. The researchers suspect that greater public awareness may have been, in part, what has helped.

The study found that the percentage of youth receiving unwanted online sexual requests declined from 13 percent in 2005 to 9 percent in 2010. Youth experiencing unwanted pornography exposure declined from 34 percent to 23 percent over the same period.

On the other hand, youth reports of online harassment increased slightly from 2005, up from 9 percent to 11 percent.

The study, “Trends in Youth Internet Victimization: Findings From Three Youth Internet Safety Surveys 2000–2010,” was published today online in the Journal of Adolescent Health. It is based on national surveys of youth ages 10 through 17 conducted in 2000, 2005, and 2010.

“The constant news about Internet dangers may give the impression that all Internet problems have been getting worse for youth but actually that is not the case,” said lead author Lisa Jones, research associate professor of psychology at the UNH Crimes against Children Research Center. “The online environment may be improving.” Jones pointed out that unwanted sexual solicitations are down over 50 percent since 2000, when attention first was drawn to the problem.

“The arrests, the publicity and the education may have tamped down the sexual soliciting online” said author Kimberly Mitchell, research assistant professor of psychology at the UNH Crimes against Children Research Center. ”The more effective safety and screening features incorporated into websites and networks may have helped reduce the unwanted encounters with pornography.”

Jones said harassment may not have fallen because attention to that online problem has been more recent. ”Hopefully, the new focus on online harassment will produce some of the same improvements in this problem that we have seen in sexual solicitations,” she said.

The authors cautioned that unwanted sexual solicitations should not be understood as necessarily communications from adult online predators. Previous research has found that while youth do not know the source of all the unwanted sexual solicitations they receive, when they did know, half were believed to come from other youth.”

Download the PDF – Trends in Youth Internet Victimization: Findings From Three Youth Internet Safety Surveys 2000–2010

And by the way, thanks to the University of New Hampshire Crimes against Children Research Center and the Journal of Adolescent Health for making this publicly available.

Sylvia

New Pew Internet Reports: Teens, Social Networks, Privacy and Parents

New Pew Report: Teens, kindness and cruelty on social network sites

Social media use has become so pervasive in the lives of American teens that having a presence on a social network site is almost synonymous with being online. Fully 95% of all teens ages 12-17 are now online and 80% of those online teens are users of social media sites. Many log on daily to their social network pages and these have become spaces where much of the social activity of teen life is echoed and amplified—in both good and bad ways.

Part 1 » Teens and social networks

Part 2 » Social media and digital citizenship: What teens experience and how they behave on social network sites

Part 3 » Privacy and safety issues

Part 4 » The role of parents in digital safekeeping and advice-giving

Part 5 » Parents and online social spaces: Tech tool ownership and attitudes towards social media

The good news – “The majority of social media-using teens say their peers are mostly kind to one another on social network sites. Overall, 69% of social media-using teens think that peers are mostly kind to each other on social network sites.”

This a great statistic to use for “positive norming” when talking to students about online behavior. Positive norming is showing that what most people do is positive and healthy, rather than focusing on the alarming behavior of the small minority. See this blog post (Cybersafety – do fear and exaggeration increase risk?) for a great slideshow from Larry Magid on how to present to parents and students about positive online  behavior rather than rely on fear tactics (which don’t work, by the way!)

Don’t let the statistics get skewed – you may also see that 88% of social media-using teens have witnessed other people be mean or cruel on social network sites. But before getting alarmed, realize that lots of people have seen something bad happen, it doesn’t mean it’s happening all the time. If someone asked you, “have you ever seen someone being mean to someone else in public?” – probably 100% of us would say yes. It does not mean that it is the norm. And in fact, only 12% of the 88% who saw meanness, saw it “frequently.”

I think this is another study showing that parents and kids are both doing pretty well navigating the brave new world of social networks and online life. Schools need to build on this positive trend!

Sylvia

Drama! Why adult concepts of cyberbullying don’t mesh with teens

It’s an unimaginable tragedy for any person to commit suicide. It’s a family’s worst nightmare and a problem that society must address. In recent months, more and more news stories are surfacing about very young people committing suicide and tying the cause to bullying, especially in online environments – cyberbullying.

Campaigns have started to find ways to reach youth with media and school anti-bullying programs. Of course people want to do the right thing. Of course adults want to help young people. But what really does help?

Alice Marwick and danah boyd, both highly respected social media and youth researchers wrote an op-ed for the New York Times today – Why Cyberbullying Rhetoric Misses the Mark

It’s based on a new paper – The Drama! Teen Conflict, Gossip, and Bullying in Networked Publics

You should read these, both of them. Why? Because the authors talked to teens, and listened. For six years. Across all kinds of kids, all kinds of socio-economic groups and geography. What they heard was that teens do not use the same language as adults. What an adult might label “bullying”, teens call “drama.” And in the paper, the authors distill what that means and how it plays out in real life (both online and off.)

It’s not just a different word for the same thing. The authors listened to youth about the motivation – why would teens engage in drama? What do they get out of it? It’s a fascinating read.

One of the big takeaways for me was the relationship of adult bullying solutions to the issues of youth agency. When we ask young people to accept adult definitions and solutions to the problems of their lives, adults often ignore the fact that this is asking them to put a label on themselves. If you are being bullied and adults tell you “tell an adult”, it’s meant as a friendly, supportive gesture. However, for a young person, that means first accepting that they are a victim. This is a big ask for a young person building their own identity.

I hope you take the time to read both the article and the full paper. They are worth it!

Sylvia

Paper Abstract: While teenage conflict is nothing new, today’s gossip, jokes, and arguments often play out through social media like Formspring, Twitter, and Facebook. Although adults often refer to these practices with the language of “bullying,” teens are more likely to refer to the resultant skirmishes and their digital traces as “drama.” Drama is a performative set of actions distinct from bullying, gossip, and relational aggression, incorporating elements of them but also operating quite distinctly. While drama is not particularly new, networked dynamics reconfigure how drama plays out and what it means to teens in new ways. In this paper, we examine how American teens conceptualize drama, its key components, participant motivations for engaging in it, and its relationship to networked technologies. Drawing on six years of ethnographic fieldwork, we examine what drama means to teenagers and its relationship to visibility and privacy. We argue that the emic use of “drama” allows teens to distance themselves from practices which adults may conceptualize as bullying. As such, they can retain agency – and save face – rather than positioning themselves in a victim narrative. Drama is a gendered process that perpetrates conventional gender norms. It also reflects discourses of celebrity, particularly the mundane interpersonal conflict found on soap operas and reality television. For teens, sites like Facebook allow for similar performances in front of engaged audiences. Understanding how “drama” operates is necessary to recognize teens’ own defenses against the realities of aggression, gossip, and bullying in networked publics.

Cybersafety – do fear and exaggeration increase risk?

Larry Magid, co-director of Connect Safely.org has created a very effective slideshare about how exaggerating the risk of being online actually increases the real risk.

This is perfect for a back to school presentation – it is clear, jargon-free, and aimed at parents.

Do fear and exaggeration increase risk?

View more presentations from Larry Magid
Be sure to view this slideshow all the way to the end, where Larry gives examples of “positive norming” as an alternative to fear-based messages about cybersafety and cyberbullying. Positive norming is when facts are presented about what most people do – and most people do not bully or engage in risky online behavior. Focusing on behavior that is NOT the norm makes it seem like it’s more prevalent than it actually is.
As Larry points out:
  • People, especially youth, can benefit from positive images and role models
  • Creating a culture of respect actually can lead to respect
  • Respectful behavior truly is normal. Most kids do not bully

Sylvia

What’s the “do”? Student iPad implementation choices

This summer we’ve done a bunch of iPad training with students who will be tech leaders in their schools. We had students from 6th-10th grade in about 20 different schools (all with different setups!) It’s been interesting to with so many different schools – because we’ve learned so much from them how many technical and philosophical choices there are when implementing iPads.

Two things that are going to matter greatly are: 1) decisions about setting up the iPads and 2) what you expect the students to do with them.

Management
Very broadly speaking, the iPads can either be set up with group management software or they can be set up more loosely managed (more like the way a normal iPad is set up). Either way you can set the profile to not be able to access anything rated “adult” in the App Store, and not allow any paid App downloads from the iTunes account.

The managed way you have more “control” – some adult will see any download on any machine, can more easily mass purchase Apps, they will be easier to revert to an initial condition, etc. It also matters whether they will be handed out randomly to students or assigned a single user and whether they can take them home.

The managed way makes it easier for adults to monitor and control, the individual way makes it a more useful personal device, but with more ability to “get in trouble” – a typical tradeoff.

What is the “DO”?
Is there an expectation that the students will use the iPads for any “work” or creative application – or are they strictly information appliances? Gary Stager says, “if your primary metaphor for a computer is looking stuff up, it should be no surprise when kids look up inappropriate stuff.”

Hopefully there is some expectation that the iPad will be more than a research tool. If that’s true, there should be a few paid apps for the students – free apps and browsing are not going to cut it for “real work”.

It matters greatly what you expect the students are going to do with the “stuff” they create/find on the iPad. The only ways in and out of an iPad are through the Mail App and the “Cloud”, meaning apps that use online storage. Will the students be allowed to set up the Mail app with school-supplied email accounts? What about non-school supplied email? Can they use apps like Evernote or Dropbox for file management?

If you use web apps and students will be under 13, you need to find out right away what these apps require – many teachers tell kids not to lie about their age on the Internet, and in the next breath tell them to lie about their birthdays so they can use web apps. We strongly urge our schools never do that (and we talk about why directly with the kids.)

Even if you don’t tell them, some will figure out how to set up the Mail app to access their personal email, unless all that is disabled too. (Which makes the iPad a thin, shiny brick.)

Browsing and cybersafety
Internet safety and digital citizenship are not things you can just deal with separately. They are completely dependent on what YOU CAN DO – which is completely dependent on how the iPads have been configured and what the expectations are for doing work. Even if the kids have used computers, the iPads are just different enough from a computer that you can’t depend on previous training and rules.

The browser is where the iPad is most like a regular computer. Safety/rules/filtering/blocking when using the iPad browser are exactly like any other computer on campus. The kids should be let in on what these policies are, not just the “don’t do x” stuff, but the why. The older the student, the more you have to let them in on the policy decisions so they can buy into them and support them. The older the student, the more the actions of peers will influence behavior, not the words of adults.

You can of course talk about intellectual property and citing sources, and practice saving images, URLs, etc. as they do research.

Where to start
Are the students allowed to download free apps from the App Store? If so, teach them how to use the ratings, categories and reviews to find good ones. If these are personal machines, teach them how to use and manage bookmarks in Safari. Practice setting the wallpaper and moving apps into organized folders. (Setting the wallpaper seems trivial but actually hits a lot of basic functionality and allows you to talk about using pictures that are too personal.)

Let them teach each other useful things they’ve found and figured out. They will find amazing stuff. You will need the cable that goes from the iPad to a projector. Get them used to sharing to a group – the wallpaper of them kissing the boyfriend will quickly be replaced.

Many schools start their iPad lessons with the school’s AUP (Acceptable Use Policy.) However, you better read it first. We find that most AUPs are pretty miserably written for kids (and parents) and it’s a waste of time to go over them in any detail. It’s a crime that these are often the only message that parents get about technology – incomprehensible and punitive. Then we ask them to sign that they understand and will obey – there’s some vision of 21st century learning, eh?… (another rant for back-school time…). Seriously – Have the kids write their own rules – usually they will come up with a list that is just fine to start with.

But treat the rules as a living document. Expect to tweak them from time to time – in many AUPs for example, there are rules about not changing settings of the computers. For an iPad, you just have to get into the settings. Don’t just let your rules get stale and breaking them become the only way to get work done. If “bad things” happen, let the kids discuss and amend the rules to cover it.

More complex questions to deal with
Are students allowed to connect to a home computer and add a second iTunes account attached to mom’s credit card? Don’t assume the students won’t figure this out or that this will only happen in affluent communities. What about push notifications or allowing an app to use your location – useful in Google Earth, creepy in Foursquare. What about apps like Skype or chat apps like KakaoTalk. Do the school phone rules apply to iPads that are being used like a phone? If current school rules simply ban phones, you will likely have a gap in your policies since in many ways iPads are more like smartphones than computers.

If the policies are too restrictive, you are going to have to try to get buy-in from the students on why things are locked down – because they will immediately start running into brick walls where the usefulness is diminished – and you will end up playing whack-a-mole with kids who will quickly find ways around the restrictions (many for entirely justified reasons).

The big thing I haven’t mentioned is this… you can’t talk about this with just the students… the teachers have to be on the same page and understand these issues too. Students and teachers should be learning and making decisions about implementation as a team.

In the best case scenario, this not only creates a better educated community, but you will be walking the talk of a collaborative learning community, where everyone is a stakeholder and participant.

In the worst case scenario, if you do some cursory PD and hope it trickles down to the students, or the iPads are so locked down that they are useless — kids and teachers will end up getting blamed for the “failure” of the iPad program. That would just be sad, not to mention a huge waste of scarce dollars.

Sylvia

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The importance of addressing bullying as part of the learning mission of school

Everyone agrees that school bullying is a problem that should be dealt with, but there is little agreement on how exactly to do it. (Or even if it’s actually happening, see yesterday’s post Survey reveals disconnect in online safety education.) With the advent of new forms of digital agression, schools are having to figure out ways to add those to their prevention programs, even when it’s not always clear what the law is or what societal norms are.

Most people who work in or with schools agree that schools do not change quickly, and adding a few “lessons” on cyberbullying will often have no impact. Many schools won’t even get around to doing anything until a crisis occurs. No matter how much everyone agrees that addressing behavior and citizenship is a whole-school, full-time concern, it gets short shrift on the long to-do list of what school is supposed to provide.

In fact, cyberbullying should not be addressed as a separate issue, it should be integrated with a whole-school, perhaps whole-community approach to bullying and citizenship.

In that light, I found this policy and practice brief, Embedding Bullying Interventions into a Comprehensive System of Student and Learning Supports (PDF) to be very enlightening. It speaks to all these points, and more.

In it, the researchers argue for a move from the traditional view of bullying prevention as an add-on to the school mission, but to address it as a fully integrated component of providing a fully functioning learning environment. They make the case for addressing barriers to learning not as a separate set of programs (such as traditional “bullying prevention”) but as a fully recognized component of the learning mission of the school.

The time has come to move away from stand-alone programs for addressing problems such as bullying and other specific types of problems manifested by students. Such programs add to the marginalized, fragmented, and piecemeal approach to student and learning supports that has dominated schools for far too long. Rather than pursuing one more discrete program focused on a specific concern, it is essential to use each concern that rises to a high policy level as an opportunity to catalyze and leverage systemic change. The aim should be to take another step toward transforming how schools go about ensuring that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed at school. To this end, it is time to develop a comprehensive system of interventions for addressing the full range of barriers to learning and teaching and for re-engaging disconnected students. Such a system is needed to coalesce an intervention continuum ranging from programs for primary prevention (including the promotion of mental health) and early-age intervention — through those for addressing problems soon after onset – on to treatments for severe and chronic problems.

Addressing barriers to learning and teaching and reengaging disconnected students is a school improvement imperative. Developing and implementing a comprehensive, multifaceted, and cohesive system of student and learning supports is the next evolutionary stage in meeting this imperative. It is the missing component in efforts to close the achievement gap, enhance school safety, reduce dropout rates, shut down the pipeline from schools to prisons, and promote well-being and social justice.

The time has come to move away from stand-alone programs for addressing problems such as bullying and other specific types of problems manifested by students. Such programs add to the marginalized, fragmented, and piecemeal approach to student and learning supports that has dominated schools for far too long. Rather than pursuing one more discrete program focused on a specific concern, it is essential to use each concern that rises to a high policy level as an opportunity to catalyze and leverage systemic change. The aim should be to take another step toward transforming how schools go about ensuring that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed at school. To this end, it is time to develop a comprehensive system of interventions for addressing the full range of barriers to learning and teaching and for re-engaging disconnected students. Such a system is needed to coalesce an intervention continuum ranging from programs for primary prevention (including the promotion of mental health) and early-age intervention — through those for addressing problems soon after onset – on to treatments for severe and chronic problems.

Addressing barriers to learning and teaching and reengaging disconnected students is a school improvement imperative. Developing and implementing a comprehensive, multifaceted, and cohesive system of student and learning supports is the next evolutionary stage in meeting this imperative. It is the missing component in efforts to close the achievement gap, enhance school safety, reduce dropout rates, shut down the pipeline from schools to prisons, and promote well-being and social justice.”

Conclusion from Embedding Bullying Interventions into a Comprehensive System of Student and Learning Supports (PDF) from the Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA

Sylvia

Survey reveals disconnect in online safety education

Survey reveals disconnect in online safety education (eSchool News)

  • 81% of school administrators, including principals and superintendents, said they believe their districts are adequately preparing students in online safety, security, and ethics
  • 51% of teachers agree
  • 33% of teachers said they believe their school or district requires a cyber safety curriculum be taught in the classroom setting
  • 68% administrators said they believe the same thing

Ooops…

I think what this shows is that the devil is in the details. Blanket policies about teaching online safety, security, and ethics get lost by the time these policies get to the classroom level. Now stir in the fact that 36% of teachers in this survey say they have received zero hours of district-provided training in cyber security, cyber safety, and cyber ethics with an additional 40% receiving between one and three hours of training in their school districts. Add a dollop of confusion about laws, policies, and the ethics of situations that didn’t even exist a year or two ago. Sift in parents who believe all sorts of different things about what school should allow kids to do online, and bake in an oven of stress about standardized testing in core subjects with no time for “extras” like citizenship, digital or others.

In fact, last year, Julie Evans of Project Speak Up said that students reported to her that teachers who get training in Internet safety restrict Internet access even more out of fear and confusion.

This is a recipe for confusion and confusion leads to paralysis.

I think the answer is evolving towards shared decision-making at all levels (including students), accepting that this is a rapidly changing situation and can’t be “finished”, and moving towards including these lessons into larger programs that address ethics, safety, civics, and community norms of behavior. The more we ghettoize “cyber” safety and ethics, the more likely it is to be misunderstood and dropped for lack of time.

Sylvia